In recent years, various information processing systems have been developed to keep step with the rapid progress of the information industry, and recording methods and apparatuses fitted to the respective information systems have been developed and employed. Recently, a thermal transfer recording method has been used as one such recording method since the apparatus used is light and compact, does not make noise, has excellent operability and maintainability, and is easy to colorize.
This thermal transfer recording method can be classified into two large categories, that is, a thermal melting type and a heat migrating type. Various methods have been proposed for the latter method in order to obtain a transferred image with a high density by the thermal transfer recording method, but those methods experience various problems such as fading of the transferred image during storage, retransfer of a dye to surfaces of other materials, an increase in curling of the image-receiving material after transfer, and an increase in the production cost of the recording medium.
Accordingly, a method for increasing the density of a transferred image, that is, a thermal transfer image-receiving material having an image-receiving layer formed by coating a dispersion prepared by emulsifying and dispersing a dye-accepting substance (for example, a dye-accepting polymer and a thermal solvent having a high dye-solubility) in a water-soluble binder, was proposed by the present inventor in JP-A-2-106392 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an unexamined published Japanese application), JP-A-2-239986 and JP-A-2 243392 to solve these problems.
However, it has been found that the size of dispersed substances in the above dispersion increases upon aging, and the image transferred onto the imagereceiving material is blurred at a high temperature and high humidity.